Measuring Measures

Some do it incredibly well, others not so much so. Often the difference between “incredibly well” and “not so much so” is one of semantics. Something stated incredibly well in the office during a marketing huddle comes off not so much so when it hits the streets. Anybody remember NasalCrom? That was allowed out of the room?

Did We Make Money?

Business has a very hard measure of success. Put as cleanly as concisely as possible, it is “Did we make money?”

That’s it. “Did we make money?”

Answer yes? Goodness. Answer no? Badness.

Again, semantics is making this simple for us. Make money good. Lose money bad.

The logic of these things is infallible. “Did we make money?” Yes. “Did we make more than we spent?” Yes.

Oh, incredible goodness.

Answer No? Tweaking time. We had enough goodness to determine if we can make more goodness. This is a far better situation than “Did we make money?” No. “Stop!”

Take all the other measurements you want, put them on a scale and somewhere at some point in time the other side of that scale will have the coin of the realm and if the two don’t balance? Badness!

Yet what escapes me is this; one of the simplest ways to make sure your marketing dollars are providing real, recognizable ROI is to do a simple semantic analysis of the material. Here’s a little test to show you how semantics can make such a difference.

Marketers, which of the following two questions do you want to answer with a big, whopping “YES!” before you publish your creative?

“Does this material really make sense to our audience?”

“Does this material make the kind of sense to our audience that it makes to us?”

Semantics in action, folks. It’s a wonderful thing. Remember, we don’t care that the target audience can understand the words and images and think the colors are nice, we want to know if all that money we’re spending will result in the capture of their hearts, minds and pocketbooks. Marketing material needs to be in the language, jargon, colors, textures, concepts, …, of the audience, not of the people doing the creative or even the people paying for it. Unless you can become your audience, hire a semanticist to make sure that what the group of 35-50 year old mixed-ethnic group came up with by consensus will really make sense to the 15 year old Bourica.

Back to that “Did we make money?” and “Did we make more than we spent?” stuff. Here a three minute movie that puts it all into perspective. It answers all the questions:

Did we make money? Yes!

Did we make more than we spent? Yes!

Did a little semantic analysis, putting our marketing material into the language of our audience, do the trick? Oh, yes!